LITMIR.BIZ

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worse for a few ax cuts.

      “Coming, Uncle.” Hunter reached for the door latch and took a deep, steadying breath. It did nothing to ease the knot that had cramped his belly from the moment Jock McKie’s disheveled messenger had banged on the gates of Carmichael Castle. It wasn’t fear, it was the hunger for revenge dueling with his inbred sense of justice.

      “The Murrays have paid for what they did to my sister,” his father had told him before he left. “Jock saw to that. There’s been enough blood spilled—on both sides,” added Ross Carmichael, a man of peace and reason. “Jock would not listen to my pleas he end the feud, but now that he’s sent for you, use that golden tongue of yours to make him see reason. More deaths will not bring our Brenna back.”

      Nay, nothing would do that, Hunter thought, his hand tightening on the latch. But he would give all he owned—coin, property—to be cast back twelve years and have a chance to plunge his blade into Alex Murray’s black heart. He wrenched open the door and was driven back a step by the harsh light, the stench of smoke and unwashed bodies.

      “Dieu,” Gavin whispered, goggle-eyed. “I’ve stayed in taverns that were more...”

      “Civilized? Luncarty was once.” When his aunt was alive. And yet, the great hall was much as Hunter remembered—narrow, dark and low ceilinged, a peat fire smoldering in the corner hearth, hard-looking men in rough wool seated jowl to jowl at the scarred trestle tables, eating and arguing fit to raise the dead. It was a world away from Carmichael Castle with its linen-draped tables, tapestry-covered walls and multicourse meals served by liveried maids while a minstrel plucked at a harp and his parents spoke of books or his mother sang an ancient poem.

      Hunter sighed. “When I came here to visit, I thought this the grandest place, so wild and free. Of course, with Aunt Brenna the lady here, things were much finer and cleaner.”

      “Hunter? Damn and blast, where is that lad?”

      “Here, Uncle.” Hunter squinted through the smoky pall to spy a big four-poster bed set square in the middle of the room.

      “Does he not have a bedchamber?” Gavin whispered.

      “Aye, he does, I expect, but Uncle Jock would have to be dead to stay away out of the thick of things.”

      The man propped up in the bed was nearly as unchanged as his tower, Oh, time had dulled Jock’s black hair to steel gray and cut ragged lines in his square face, but the eyes staring from beneath beetled brows were as sharp as ever.

      “Well, I’ll be damned. Ye’re bigger even than old Lionel Carmichael was. Come here, lad!” Jock waved an imperious arm.

      Conscious of the grinning McKies, Hunter flushed and trailed across the room, feeling like a lad again.

      “Aye, ye’ve your mama’s coloring, but yer grandsire’s size. Foul-tempered old bastard, he was. Always liked that about him. What of ye?” Jock grabbed hold of Hunter’s forearm and squeezed hard enough to draw a wince. “Not bad... not bad. See,” he shouted to the room at large. “I told ye he’d have been lifting something weightier than those bloody books of his da’s.”

      “I—”

      “Chief justice of the king’s court, he is.” Jock’s whiskered jowls lifted in a huge grin. “Mighty proud of ye, lad. Mighty proud. Aren’t we?”

      The chorus of congratulation barely swelled when Jock cut across it. “Still ye must have found a few quarrels ye couldn’t settle with them fancy words yer da pounded into ye.”

      “Actually, it was the university in Paris that did the pounding,” Hunter said dryly. His concerned parents had shipped him off to study only a few weeks after bringing him home from Luncarty—as much to prevent him from joining Jock’s war against the Murrays as to educate him. Distance, time and exposure to the fundamentals of law had accomplished their goals. He’d returned to Scotland four years ago a cautious, educated man who weighed the outcome of a step before venturing to take it.

      Belatedly recalling his manners, Hunter turned and beckoned Gavin over. “This is Gavin Sutherland of Kinduin. You may recall that Aunt Elspeth wed Lucais Sutherland. Gavin is my second cousin, the son of Uncle Lucais’s—”

      “Whatever. Welcome, Gavin. Robbie!” Jock bellowed, causing a young man to spring from those crowded around the bed. “See young Gavin has food and drink. And give my nephie and me a bit of privacy.” While the space around them cleared, Jock waved Hunter onto a stool beside the bed.

      “’Tis good to see you looking better than I’d expected,” Hunter said.

      “And glad I am to see ye.” Jock’s wide cheeks deflated. “Though I wish it’d been under better circumstances.” He waved at his left leg, a huge mound under the coarse blanket. “Broke it in two places trying to get away from Mad Danny Murray.”

      Hunter sat forward on the stool. “He attacked you?”

      “Aye, under a flag of truce.” Jock’s lids sagged. “I lost three men before we brought him down.”

      “Your message said Daniel Murray was dead.”

      Jock smiled. “Aye. The last of Alex Murray’s sons is dead.”

      “So, it’s over, then.”

      “Over!” Fire leaped into Jock’s eyes. “It’ll no’ be over till I’ve wiped out every one of the murdering bastards who stole my—”

      “But the man who took Aunt Brenna is dead, and his sons, too. You burned the Murrays out of their tower five years ago,” Hunter added, summing up the facts as he did in many a case from the high bench. “So ’twould seem the feud is at an end.”

      “Nay!” Jock sat up straighter, cheeks puffing, face red. “There’ll be no end to it till I’ve found and killed them all.”

      “But, Uncle, there can be little left of the Murrays except old men, women and children.”

      “Aye, what of it?”

      “’Tis not Christian to make war on women and children.”

      “Was it Christian for that rutter, Murray, to take my Brenna away from her home and family? Was it Christian of them to send her bones back to me when he was done with her?”

      “Bones?” Hunter’s blood ran cold.

      “Aye. Six years ago they sent her bones in a bag, her cross still around her neck, my ring on her finger.” He waved his left hand under Hunter’s nose, light glinting off the gold band on his little finger. “Dod, I wish I could kill Alex Murray again.”

      Hunter shivered. Twelve years he’d spent trying to forget, now the pain and the rage flooded back. “I did not know of this. My father never said—”

      “Likely trying to prevent ye from riding down here and helping me and the lads deal with these bastards.” Jock clapped Hunter on the knee. “Narry fear, lad, ye’re here now, and yer help’s most welcome, what with me unable to sit a horse.”

      “What would you have me do?”

      “We need to find out where they are holed up. They’re a wily lot, these Murrays, dodging and hiding from our patrols. Owen Murray will be leading them now we’ve finally gotten rid of Mad Danny, and Alex’s oldest daughter may be riding with them.”

      “A woman reiver?”

      “Aye, that Allisun Murray’s a hard bitch, and canny, too, they say, like her cursed sire.”

      Hunter frowned, picturing an ugly crone dressed in riding leathers and wearing a sword.

      “Rumor has it she was seen treating with Ill Will Bell.”

      Air whistled between Hunter’s teeth.

      “Ye’ve heard of him, even in Edinburgh, I see. Dod, the man’s a vicious beast. I dinna need to tell ye what’ll become of the McKies

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